It's "sedative patronisation"

Untroubling familiarity and base populism is what “the people” are, dubiously, supposed to crave. This is certainly what “the people” get whenever the avant-garde is deemed to have failed.

Jonathan Meades reviews Owen Hatherley's Militant Modernism.

But is populism actually popular? Or is it simply sedative patronisation, bread and circuses devised by a cynical caste of free marketeers who presumptuously underestimate the collective intellect?